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Boards that fail to post.

This board came from a recycler and while not a first generation pentium board it has something to offer in the way of information

When I got it, it failed with a post code of C1, the BIOS was unable to detect the RAM installed. To solve the problem I replaced the bloated electrolytic capacitors. There were 10 in total and they are marked in red.
After replacing them the board works perfectly. The caps marked in green are solid capcitors and were fine.

I have another socket 775 that is a couple of years older, it worked for a short time and then failed and now shows no POST activity at all. This board does not use solid caps around the CPU and every one of those caps is swollen.
The capacitors I have on hand are slightly too large to fit in under a CPU cooler so I've ordered some solid capacitors that will fit to replace the electrolytics around the cpu. I fully expect replacing those caps with bring the board back to life.

So the lesson to be learned from these boards.... don't throw away a board that doesn't pass a BIOS POST test. In all likelihood $2 worth of capacitors from ebay will bring it back to life.

Not bad. What method did you use to remove/install the capacitors? Desoldering these things can be a pain on newer boards.

I'd recommend a desoldering station with a really powerful heating element. I have an 80W unit and it works on 99% of the boards I work with. Some boards with really thick ground planes will give it trouble, especially if ROHS solder is used and I'll have to break out the hot air station to get it working.

I don't recommend using one of those spring loaded desoldering tools because the fast sucking action can cause the solder to freeze with bubbles inside the hole and in some cases you'll have to resort to drilling it out.

I've got a similar motherboard in my Windows 7 PC... minus the parallel port, and it's been working for about 8 years now. Yours is an Athlon/Phenom board right? I've got my Athlon x4 overclocked to 3.5ghz and can still manage modern games even.

Because most of the replies on this thread were lost to the data gremlins I thought I'd give an update. I've managed to bring 9 out of 10 formerly dead boards back to life.

The easiest way I've found to remove the caps is a large 80W non temp regulated soldering iron with a tip about 9mm in diameter. I originally bought it for desoldering pcb mounted heat sinks.
I simply place the motherboard upside down, flow a little fresh solder onto each leg of the cap then place the tip of the iron across both leads and they drop right out of the board.
I clean up the holes with a vacuum desoldering station I got off ebay. Some can be stubborn so you need to run it at about 450C and give plenty of time for the heat to melt the solder all the way through.

I generally replace electrolytics with new solid capacitors, but a couple of older boards I've had to use electrolytics again due to lead spacing and physical size constraints.

Also if you have newer boards you are scrapping its worth the effort of recovering the caps (from around the CPU in particular), sometimes finding caps in that low profile can be difficult.

Edit: I did have a couple of holes that were extremely stubborn and resisted all attempts with the desoldering station. For those I used the larger iron and when the solder was fully molten slipped a wooden toothpick into the hole. Its crude but surprisingly effective.